Torture is intended to utterly break down a human being, to strip away their humanity and self-determination, to make them utterly and completely powerless. That is a psychological state, and thus the violence of the act is in a sense peripheral. That is why physical and psychological torture need to be viewed as the same thing - neither better or worse than the other.
Terror operates similarly. Terrorists attempt to kill as many people as possible but only because higher death tolls create more fear, more panic, and ultimately more reaction than smaller death tolls. Again, the violence of the act is secondary to its psychological end. Ironically, terror seems to have been far more effective than torture in achieving its goals. Perhaps this is because in the end torture is ultimately only good for the same thing terror is - to inspire fear and loathing, not “useful intelligence.” Maybe this is why a “reign of terror” so often describes totalitarian leaders who brutally torture their own populaces rather than the actions of terrorist organizations.
Torture is terror.
Yes, it is. In a war, one must always struggle to avoid becoming the thing against which one is fighting. I remember in the film Training Day Denzel Washington's character said something along the lines of "only a wolf could catch a wolf", which meant that you could only defeat evil by essentially giving into it. And there's no doubt that situations like this will require compromises to be undertaken, difficult choices to be made, etc. The danger is always in losing sight of what we are fighting to protect, as Dick Cheney obviously did.
The temptation of torture is actually pretty simple to understand: it's easy. Easy to do, easier to order. Not easy to live with, as it turns out. Savagery, it turns out, is pretty easy. Civilization is much more difficult, and it entails restraining some of the darker human impulses in the service of lifting humanity out of the primordial ooze. It's easy to say that it's just too difficult and do whatever you want, but that approach (as we have seen) leads invariably to chaos and madness. That's why torture isn't a show of strength against terror, but a pathetic act of desperation that demeans everyone involved without too much in terms of a benefit.
And why on Earth Dick Cheney would think he's an appealing messenger for this kind of message is beyond me. My guess is that he's in denial on a great many things.
